Three Tigers Martial Arts

Imagine, if you will, a Karate school where aliveness, awareness, and a welcoming attitude come together to create a positive training enviroment.

Now imaginbe the opposite of that. That, folks, is Three Tigers Martial Arts.

This school is almost devoid of aliveness, with only one sparring class held on Saturdays, and even then, it's only point sparring, and could hardly be called even semi-contact. The equipment seems to be all there, but I hardly see a kicking pad or wavemaster used in an hour's worth of instruction. Even the kicking base shaped like a stocky guy never gets kicked! FOR SHAME!

The dojo isn't small, per se, but when more than 10 karateka are training, it can get crowded. The floor has your standard interlocking puzzle mats. There are normally enough instructors there to provide answers for any student's questions.

The head instructor was somewhat hostile in response to my girlfriend's questioning of the techniques. Having prior JJJ experience, she naturally questioned the Shotokan Crappling moves, and ms. head instructor was NOT pleased.

Striking was... well, it was poor. Chambered kicks, punches from the hips, and imitation kickboxing moves when needed. Grappling was something I'm not even going to get into... ok, ok, I'll just say this: their defense against a RNC was to quickly execute a low horse stance.

On top of all that, they have a karate tournament team, complete with Kama Team. Blurgh.

Overall, if you see this school, my immediate recommendation is to tell everyone in the general area to stay away. I'll leave you with my girlfriend's review: "It was the shittiest thing I've ever done. It sucked."

Your Posting Is Lies

Shame on You! This review was posted by the Black Belt Instructor of a rival school. Shame on you for posting lies in an attempt to discredit a school you obviously find a threat to your own pitifull existence.

I should note that I am not a student at Three Tigers, but I have known the owner of Three Tigers for years and she is one of the finest Karate instructors I have met outside of Japan (where I got my training).

Obviously your training does not include such concepts as honor, respect, integrity, and truthfulness. You should be ashamed of yourself, and of your girlfriend for allowing you to pull such a dirty trick. I know who you are, and who your instructor is, and the local karate authorities have been notified of this vicious and unwaranted attack. I have suggested that his rank be reviewed if not revoked.

As for you. You are an idiot. You were recognized by other black belts who had left your dojo for a better one the moment you entered the door. If you lack the skills to complain with authority, you can at least learn some humility and the ability to keep your mouth shut.

My suggestion, leave the spineless wonder of an instructor who put you up to this reprehensible task and go to Three Tigers begging for mercy. Perhaps they will tech you some true Karate, beginning with the concept of giri.

As for you. You are an idiot. You were recognized by other black belts who had left your dojo for a better one the moment you entered the door. If you lack the skills to complain with authority, you can at least learn some humility and the ability to keep your mouth shut.

My suggestion, leave the spineless wonder of an instructor who put you up to this reprehensible task and go to Three Tigers begging for mercy. Perhaps they will tech you some true Karate, beginning with the concept of giri.

Shame on You! This review was posted by the Black Belt Instructor of a rival school. Shame on you for posting lies in an attempt to discredit a school you obviously find a threat to your own pitifull existence.

I should note that I am not a student at Three Tigers, but I have known the owner of Three Tigers for years and she is one of the finest Karate instructors I have met outside of Japan (where I got my training).

Obviously your training does not include such concepts as honor, respect, integrity, and truthfulness. You should be ashamed of yourself, and of your girlfriend for allowing you to pull such a dirty trick. I know who you are, and who your instructor is, and the local karate authorities have been notified of this vicious and unwarranted attack. I have suggested that his rank be reviewed if not revoked.

As for you. You are an idiot. You were recognized by other black belts who had left your dojo for a better one the moment you entered the door. If you lack the skills to complain with authority, you can at least learn some humility and the ability to keep your mouth shut.

My suggestion, leave the spineless wonder of an instructor who put you up to this reprehensible task and go to Three Tigers begging for mercy. Perhaps they will tech you some true Karate, beginning with the concept of giri.

You know what's funny about this diatribe?

You know the person socially but, never trained at their school. That's ridiculous. That's like saying I never drove that car but, it is a good car because my friend built it.

Make an argument about the techniques or hush your mouth.

Oh, and you have failed on every one of the life virtues you apparently learned wrong in Martial Arts.

Humility: Yes, you fail because you think you can threaten to remove someones rank. Also, telling someone how to speak with authority isn't humble. Someone with humility wouldn't ASSUME they knew the person, they would investigate.

Respect: you fail here to. Ad hominem attacks aren't leveled by respectful people. They would address the alleged problems in the dojo with facts. Notice, in your entire crying response, not once did you address the techniques of the school. You attacked airman Kai with name calling and attacks on his character.

Integrity: You fail here also. Again this goes back to you not investigating who this reviewer is IRL. If you had integrity you'd approach the person you think did this and ask them. You wouldn't resort to scare tactics to get the review pulled down.

Truthfulness: Yes, tell us who you are until then, you fail this part also.

OK Kaia. Enough is enough. I've known who were since the first day you walked into my school. And I've known about this very untruthful posting you put out here since about 2 days after you did it. There was no point in replying so I chose not to.

So.. since you want your points addressed, let's talk about your critique... In the interest of journalistic integrity you need to reveal to your readers that you do indeed train at another karate dojo in the local area as part of their MMA program (yes... you were recognized by "defectors" from that school that are now my students). I showed those "defectors" your post and their reply was "Well, we are paying more than twice as much and we are driving more than twice as far to train here instead so you must be doing something right!" Enough said there. You should probably also let your readers know that you came into this school under false pretenses of wanting to enroll your girlfriend in classes when in fact your agenda was to write this negative post. As a side note.... there are a lot of belt factories and McDojos in this area so I find it hard to believe that you would choose to single us out unless you had an agenda. With all that said... your readers can make their own determination of the veracity of your post.

As for the content of your post... there are a lot of inaccuracies. Yes... we teach point sparring in one class each Saturday to our tournament team. However, the school curriculum focuses on continuous sparring and we hold sparring class every third lesson plan. And yes, that's right, we have a sport karate competition team. You forgot to mention our XMA program with all that flippy stuff too. I can tell you have limited knowledge of what it takes to run a martial arts school. A tournament team or XMA program keeps younger students interested in karate long enough for them to stick around and learn the things they actually need to know. You can't teach a student that isn't on your training floor. As my friend Mike Chat says.. "It takes discipline, focus, commitment and dedication to do sport karate and XMA. Those are qualities most parents/students want from their training and they are necessary for any quality martial artist. BTW... doesn't that other school (who I'm being polite enough not to name) where you've been training have a tournament team too? Why yes they do. Why don't you make a derisive post about that.

As for our "imitation kickboxing moves", my lineage falls under Joe Lewis. I got my Dan rank under one of his 7th Dans. I think our pedigree is fine there. And as for grappling and self-defense, we fall under Hidy Ochi's lineage on that one. Anyone who knows anything about self-defense will know that no more needs to be said in that area. Anyone who doesn't know who he is can go to Borders and pick up a couple of his self-dfense books. And yes... when doing our traditional karate moves we have chambered kicks and we chamber our hands at the hips. That is what traditional karate does. There is value in traditional martial arts and in progressive self-defense. We teach both. As for not using all our equipment.... do you really think I would spend all that money for stuff to sit and collect dust. Not hardly. Just because you didn't see us use it doesn't mean it doesn't get used. As for the "stocky guy" that's Bully Bob. Great for teaching the little guys how and where to do knee and elbow strikes.

Thanks to USJedi's for his post. Whether or not he decides to tell you who he is or not is up to him. I will tell you that we know each other professionally, not socially. He is not my student but I have trained and coached his students and he has trained and coached my students. He was promoted to 7th Dan under his instructor in Japan where he lived and studied. He is an internationally recognized martial artist who carried the Olympic torch for the last Olympic Games. I'm sure he elected to make his post because he felt your readers deserved to know the truth and I hadn't bothered to take the time to refute your post myself.

If you don't like what we are doing here, that's fine... train someplace else that makes you happy. But you spent less than a total of 90 minutes in my school and that doesn't qualify you to pass judgment on what we are teaching or how we are teaching it. Covertly posting a negative review on someone's dojo without the courtesy to let them know and respond lacks integrity. But what do I know? I'm just an instructor who actually owns a school and who is positively influencing people's lives instead of someone who sits on the internet bad-mouthing others under an alias name.

Bottom Line: My black belts can all defend themselves just fine and that is what matters to me and them. We have one of the best martial arts program in the mid-west. Anyone reading this is welcome to stop by for a visit and speak with me, my instructors, or my students at any time and make their own judgment.